1.0

[Velhart]

On the topic of higher-level monsters in starter zones, I think if they made the treants and goobbues and adamantoises right outside the starter cities hostile rather than passive, that may be a good enough boost in the danger factor for sprouts to make things interesting without making them tedious.

That is called needless punishment. What they have now is a much better way of introducing a new player to enemies that can aggro you. Also it is very misleading to a new player on how the game works.

[MicahZerrshia]

The best thing about high level anything in starter and middle range zones was naked races for fun and prizes.

To be fair, 1.x had only a handful of zones, so for instance all of thanalan was a single zone. Having it filled with nothing but lvl 1-20 mobs would have been silly. Most the higher level mobs were set away although there were the weird single and groups of high level mobs right in the middle of a low level camp.

What I miss the most is mobs who were dangerous and could even 1-2 shot even level capped players. Exploration was a hoot back then. I remember the thrill of getting all the nodes unlocked. Getting to Gelmorra Ruins or Moonspore Grove was an achievement in and of itself.

Good times.

[Yukiko]

There were high Level Monsters between LvL 5 and LvL 15 areas.
In Gridania the wolves (problem there was the small pathing)
In Limsa the Gobbue (if you see something big, run around and avoid it)
In Ulda i think there were dracons roaming (compared to limsa, there were more of them, harder to avoid)
Hard to remember because they patched them out soon after release because many dead players in starting areas (but later on in endgame areas the LvL99 monsters were ok?)
Players complained that they being oneshotted even when they follow the path (just like in the wizard of oz: dont leave the path!)
It was a good gamedesign with those roaming "dangers" but... in Gridania it was pure pain because of those small paths!
However, i agree: they needed a better AI because with bad RNG they were farming low level players...
Here some rare videos - Gobbue shows it best:
Escape impossible - he can throw stones!
Dont provoke something that looks stronger - he might get angry!
Just to show he was beatable later on - or to watch nostalgic combat system!

Best thing on open world was: You just asked in area chat for help and players were helping - since 2.0 instance only dungeons you can not do that any more!
We have beaten unbeatable LvL99 Monsters because the whole server helped: With about 60 Players you could count 2 hours, the more the faster it went down!
Try to go into a 2.x dungeon with more than 4, 8 or 24 players - its not possible!

Edit: We had sight aggro: run or walk behind them to avoid,
hear aggro: you could walk to avoid them,
smell aggro: go into close range and they will follow you,
none aggro: if you dont attack, they will not too.

[Androir]

Thereare 50er hunt bosses. Not enough?

[Talraen]

The real danger in 1.0 wasn't from the aggressive Antlings and whatnot near Black Brush. No, the real danger was that if you were a Conjurer and you went to AOE spell mode (which was a circle for conjurers) and cast Fire on a mob, and it hit the five goats that you didn't realize have been following you because of their curious nature, and then they all stomped you.

I will admit that was hilarious, not least because I played Thaumaturge (cone AOE FTW!), but it didn't improve the game in any way. And they got rid of "curious" mobs before 1.0 was even done, I think.

[StrategistShiroe]

This just sounds like the odd time a Hunt spawns in a newbie zone of the map.

[Yukiko]

This just sounds like the odd time a Hunt spawns in a newbie zone of the map.

No, those were normal monsters.
They made it to make the game feel dangerous... they given possibility to avoid them - you could not run mindless from A to B.
Later we got NMs on fixed positions (i liked it because you could plan ahead when and where you will "raid" them)
A bit after NMs we got HNMs. We could force spawn them with a short quest and it wasnt just hack&shlash, we oftn had a time limit with a special task (splitt to 4+4 or kill less lvl monsters to spawn big one)

[FudoMyoo]

Seriously ..... 1.0 is just players being nostalgia ... YOU WOULDN'T WANT TO PLAY IN 1.0!!! TRUST ME!!!!!!

[Atoli]

Seriously ..... 1.0 is just players being nostalgia ... YOU WOULDN'T WANT TO PLAY IN 1.0!!! TRUST ME!!!!!!

1.x was amazing and fun in many ways. It was wrapped in the most horrible UI I have ever seen and had lots of other smaller troubles (from the copy-pasted maps to the fact that it wouldn't even run properly on many computers and just in general all the hoops the players had to jump through) but it had many ideas that were executed quite well that I very much enjoyed opposed to what happened when ARR came around.
Objectively speaking, you had to put up with a lot to get to really enjoy 1.x, but if you did, it was really rewarding.
ARR is a lot more approachable, but while "getting there" is a lot easier and more logical now, what you get to is kind of..bland.

[Zephyr]

I remember the cactuars in thanalan that were your level and used 1000 needles which would one shot you if you were solo since you only had around 500 HP at that level until they patched it to 100 needles